The General looked towards the door and saw his nephew enter, behind a mother and daughter whom, as it seemed to him, their acquaintances in the crowd around them greeted with a peculiar cordiality; the mother, still young, with a stag-like carriage of the head, a long throat, swathed in white tulle, and grizzled hair, on which shone a spray of diamonds; the daughter, equally tall and straight, repeating her mother's beauty with a bloom and radiance of her own. Innocent and happy, with dark eyes and a soft mouth, Miss Maddison dropped a little curtsey to the presidential pair, and the room turned to look at her as she did so.
"A very sweet-looking girl," said the General warmly. "Her father is, I think, a professor."
"He was. He is now just a writer of books. But Elsie was brought up in Cambridge. How did Mr. Roger know them?"
"His Eton tutor told him to go and see them."
"I thought Miss Floyd expected him to-day?" said Miss Boyson carelessly, adjusting her eyeglass.
"It was a mistake, a misunderstanding," replied the General hurriedly. "Miss Floyd's party is put off till next week."
"Daphne is just coming in," said Miss Boyson.
The General turned again. The watchful Cecilia was certain that he was not in love with Daphne. But the nephew—the inordinately handsome, and by now much-courted young man—what was the real truth about him?
Cecilia recognized—with Mrs. Verrier—that merely to put the question involved a certain tribute to young Barnes. He had at any rate done his fortune-hunting, if fortune-hunting it were, with decorum.
"Miss Floyd is looking well to-night," remarked the General.